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October Publication: Engaged Anthropology: Diversity and Dilemmas, the second Current Anthropology issue of the Wenner-Gren Symposium Series

September 30, 2010

The Wenner-Gren Symposium Series is now being published through Current Anthropology. The series had been with Berg Publishers (Oxford) since 2002. The current venture permits specific articles from the Wenner-Gren symposia to be widely available through the internet and ensures that their content and discussions can reach a worldwide audience. The second issue, Engaged Anthropology: Diversity and Dilemmas edited by Setha Low and Sally Merry is already available online and the print edition will be mailed out alongside the October 2010 issue of Current Anthropology. The volume is the outcome of the Wenner-Gren Workshop: The Anthropologist as Social Critic: Working Toward a More Engaged Anthropology held at the Foundation Offices Jan 22-25th, 2008.

The next volume in the Symposium Series will be ﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿: Corporate Lives: New Perspectives on the Social Life of the Corporate Form. Edited by Damani Partridg﻿e﻿, Mari﻿na Welker and Rebecca Hardin﻿﻿﻿.﻿ T﻿his will be mailed out alongside the April 2011 regular ﻿Current Anthropology﻿ issue﻿

As a discipline, anthropology has increased its public visibility in recent years with its growing focus on engagement. Although the call for engagement has elicited responses in all sub-fields and around the world, this special issue focuses on engaged anthropology and the dilemmas it raises in US cultural and practicing anthropology. Within this field, the contributors distinguish a number of forms of engagement: 1) sharing and support, 2) teaching and public education, 3) social critique, 4) collaboration,5) advocacy and 6) activism. They show that engagement takes place during fieldwork, through applied practice, and as individual activists work in the context of war, terrorism, environmental injustice, human rights, and violence. A close examination of the history of engaged anthropology in the US reveals an enduring set of dilemmas, many of which persist in contemporary anthropological practice. The articles in this collection document the striking growth of an engaged anthropology along with continuing ambivalence and uncertainty about its practice.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Leslie C. Aiello Engaged Anthropology: Diversity and Dilemmas: Wenner-Gren Symposium, Supplement 2Setha M. Low and Sally Engle Merry Engaged Anthropology: Diversity and Dilemmas: An Introduction to Supplement 2Ida Susser The Anthropologist as Social Critic: Working toward a More Engaged AnthropologyBarbara Rose Johnston Social Responsibility and the Anthropological CitizenNorma Gonzalez Advocacy Anthropology and Education: Working through the BinariesMichael Herzfeld Engagement, Gentrification, and the Neoliberal Hijacking of HistorySigne Howell Norwegian Academic Anthropologists in Public SpacesJohn L. Jackson Jr.On Ethnographic SincerityJonathan Spencer The Perils of Engagement: A Space for Anthropology in the Age of SecurityKamari M. Clarke Toward a Critically Engaged Ethnographic PracticeKamran Asdar Ali Voicing Difference: Gender and Civic Engagement among Karachi’s PoorAlan Smart Tactful Criticism in Hong Kong: The Colonial Past and Engaging with the Present